first set out to write about Whiterock and Doctor Victor Tesla, the book was never intended to be a vast series. The first draft followed the hauntings of a family over the course of one night. Beyond Whiterock and the Tesla family, there’s not a lot of correlation between the new Ghost Town and that first book. That story had been written and was set aside for some time before I decided to revisit it. In making notes for a rewrite, a new direction took shape and the Ghost Town series was born. The original draft has now been reworked with a lot of its content appearing in my short story, ‘The Reaper of Geneseo Falls’ which should be released in a year or two.

The ‘Ghost Town’ series started out as experiments in a small farming community that saw a peaceful and serene rural town get ravaged and destroyed. The perpetrator was one Doctor Victor Tesla, a scientist who was working on a weapon only to be betrayed by his government. His wife and daughter murdered, Doctor Tesla fled to America to continue his work only to discover that another government was getting ready to betray him. Plans were in the works to kill Tesla and his team and steal his work. That’s when Tesla decided to take revenge.

Ghost Town Labs has always relied on having the best information available. In Whiterock they monitored every event that happened in the little city. Now that they are moving to a major metropolis, they need to up the surveillance to see what their ghosts can really do.

One of the ways we can have so many books about the same subject is that the characters are different. Truly special, unique characters are what changes a book from okay to a best seller. Many stories are similar but one will have amazing characters that the audience relates to and are rooting for while the other has characters that don’t strike a chord with the reader. The great character who is placed into a difficult situation is the one that we remember. The next time you are stumped for a book idea take an extra character from a book and retell the story from that character’s perspective.

When authors start writing they have that one great concept in mind. The finished book will be near and dear to them, a culmination of effort put into writing a full length novel. I would caution against starting with your prized work. I have seven published novels and will be releasing five more this year yet I still haven’t started working on the concept that got me into writing. I have it outlined and plenty of notes on it, but I am developing my work and my writing style before tackle my big project.

The first tip to improve your writing is to read more. Turn off social media blurbs and read real and deep content. Read books, read short stories, read articles, read blogs and read anything that requires extra thinking on your part. The more you read the more you will absorb the writing process. Find books that are similar and notice how authors use different ways to describe the same thing.